Paranthodon (pə-RAN-thə-don) is a genus of extinct stegosaurian dinosaur that lived in South Africa during the Early Cretaceous, approximately 145.5–136.4 million years ago. Discovered in 1845, it was one of the first stegosaurians found. Its only remains, a partial skull and isolated teeth, were found in the Kirkwood Formation. Although Owen initially identified the fragments as those of the pareiasaur Anthodon, after years of storage in the British Museum of Natural History, Broom identified the partial skull as belonging to a different genus, and named the specimen Palaeoscincus africanus. Several years later, Nopcsa, unaware of Broom's new name, similarly concluded that it represented a new taxon, and named the binomial Paranthodon owenii. However, since the Nopcsa's species name was a